A non-optimizer here asking what all of you consider to be "good" regular (repeatable) damage output for any or all classes that are focusing on dealing damage in a combat scenario.
I'm curious about damage over a given combat, like over 3 rounds, 4 rounds, 5 rounds, etc. And not really interested in single turn nova damage stuff as that is more...well...I'm not interested in that. D&D:O and Treantmonk's Temple are two fairly well known optimizer YouTube channels and I know they do all of their calculations and theorizing differently, as I'm sure we all do, so I guess I'm asking for kind of a range that you use as a player and/or DM as to what is a threshold for "good damage output. Not builds, or the most damage. Just a threshold. I'm also much more interested at the 90% of actual played levels of 1-13, and not so much any level 20 hijinks. Maybe say at levels that surround changes in the tiers of play, like levels 4, 6, 10, and 12.
For example a fighter with a longsword, the dueling fighting style, and a maxed attack/damage ability score, over 3, 4, and 5 round combats, with and without action surge, I would consider that to be a pretty decent target for a character to be doing good damage. (Notice no to-hit chance, critical hit, advantage, or situational calculations as I KNOW we all do that differently based on the tables we frequent.)
You have to have some method of accounting for hit chance to have any way of comparing e.g. dueling to archery. Assuming all shots hit but none crit is a weird assumption that leaves far too much out. I assume a baseline accuracy of 65% (70% at level 9), which includes proficiency bonus and assumes a stat bonus of +3 at L1, +4 at L4, and +5 at L8, vs the relevant defensive CR's AC (so CR 8's AC at level 8, etc).
The Treantmonk standard (eldritch blast with agonizing blast, assuming CHA 16, raising to 20 as quickly as possible) is therefore, for level L,where // is truncated (floored, since these are positive values) division, and ignoring levels 9 and 1 (i.e. before you can get agonizing):
((L+1)//6+1)*(5.5*.7+.65*(3+min(2,L//4)))
At levels 4, 6, 10, and 12:
4: 6.45
6: 12.9
10: 14.2
12: 21.3
In force damage, which is hard to resist - if you do the same damage but it's type: poison, your functional DPR is much worse.
I actually don't know if Treantmonk assumes Hex. If he does, here are those numbers again:
4: 8.9
6: 17.8
10: 19.1
12: 28.65
That's a mix of force and necrotic - necrotic is worse.
I've been meaning to one day build the Spreadsheet to End All Spreadsheets, to attempt to quantify AC, HP, and damage by tier in an objective way. 4E categorized both players and monsters into clear performance roles, "Striker" or "Tank" etc., which really helped understand primary vs. secondary statistics and benchmarks for level.... 5E lacks that. It may be, upon doing the math, that one would discover that there simply is not a unifying philosophy that can be applied to monsters, and that in fact combat difficulty is every bit as arbitrary as the CR encounter system appears. That would be... disappointing.
For martial characters, I think that doing 10-20 damage per round is "good" in Tier 1, 20-30 "good" in Tier 2, and over 30 good in Tiers 3 and 4, though the gaps really start to widen at that point between normal characters doing good damage and those that are uber-optimized to do unreasonably great damage. Player ACs all tend to stabilize between 17 and 21 somewhere during Tier 2, but I'm really not sure whether monster ACs trend upwards with Tier, or remain a scattered mess while HP ticks upwards. Proficiency in saves seems so inconsistent and arbitrary that I don't really ever know what to expect when I cast a spell at an enemy.
I've been meaning to one day build the Spreadsheet to End All Spreadsheets, to attempt to quantify AC, HP, and damage by tier in an objective way. 4E categorized both players and monsters into clear performance roles, "Striker" or "Tank" etc., which really helped understand primary vs. secondary statistics and benchmarks for level.... 5E lacks that. It may be, upon doing the math, that one would discover that there simply is not a unifying philosophy that can be applied to monsters, and that in fact combat difficulty is every bit as arbitrary as the CR encounter system appears. That would be... disappointing.
For martial characters, I think that doing 10-20 damage per round is "good" in Tier 1, 20-30 "good" in Tier 2, and over 30 good in Tiers 3 and 4, though the gaps really start to widen at that point between normal characters doing good damage and those that are uber-optimized to do unreasonably great damage. Player ACs all tend to stabilize between 17 and 21 somewhere during Tier 2, but I'm really not sure whether monster ACs trend upwards with Tier, or remain a scattered mess while HP ticks upwards. Proficiency in saves seems so inconsistent and arbitrary that I don't really ever know what to expect when I cast a spell at an enemy.
Monster AC and HP are extremely regular; there's absolutely no consistency whatsoever to monster saves.
Monster AC is an exact match, at all levels except 9, for 65% accuracy to be hit assuming a stat modifier of +3 that goes up to +4 at level 4 and +5 at level 8. At level 9 it "hiccups" to 70%.
Monster HP is mostly linear, with some odd behavior below 1 and at 20+.
The DMG offers the absolutely useless guidance of counting saves for defensive CR based on how many saves the monster is proficient in, regardless of its proficiency bonus or its relevant stat bonus, meaning a monster's CR goes up for being proficient in 3 saves with a +2 proficiency bonus but does not go up for adding +4 (or more) to each of those three stats, unless said stats have cascading effects on things that do impact CR - which WIS, INT, and CHA don't.
How can monster AC be an "exact match," when different monsters of any given CR have different ACs? What are you looking at to find an average AC, and what formula are you using to match CR to level? It is nowhere near as straightforward as you are suggesting.
How can monster AC be an "exact match," when different monsters of any given CR have different ACs? What are you looking at to find an average AC, and what formula are you using to match CR to level? It is nowhere near as straightforward as you are suggesting.
The DMG has a table of monster HP and AC by CR; actual CR is round((OCR+DCR)/2), and DCR is based on monster HP, which is then modified by half (truncated) the difference between its actual AC and the intended AC for that CR. As a result, we know the expected AC and HP of every CR.
The DMG table is a guide to quickly homebrewing your own monsters, not a peak under the hood of the design philosophy of those that are published in the MM or other source books. Picked at random, an Air Elemental (AC 15, HP 90, resistances to common weapon damages), Banderhobb (AC 15, HP 84, no resistances), and Brontosaurus (AC 15, HP 121, no resistances) are all CR 5 creatures, but other than their AC, don't seem to have anything else in particular in common about how many hit points they have or how much damage they do. Among CR 5 creatures, there are AC's as low as 9, as high as 20, and everything in between. There are HPs of 40 and below, or over 100. I can't find many that seem all that similar to what the table suggests a CR 5 should look like.
I don't think the DMG creature creation rules can be trusted for measuring actual encounters, but they might be a good baseline to measure player performance against rather than building a table of every published creature. A CR 1 creature is not a 1-for-1 match for a level 1 character, and the ratio of their strength changes a lot over the tier spectrum too so you can't just apply a simple multiplier. I suppose that it wouldn't be bad to target hitting that table's AC on an 8 or higher (65% accuracy), (which easily tracks on curve if you bring your attack ability score to 20 by level 8 as usual)... maybe 1/5 of the low end of the monster's HP range as damage per round? (14 at level 1, 29 at level 6, 44 at level 11, 62 at level 17, 71 at level 20)? That feels like it would be harder and harder to meet, however, so again I think that the ratio is too tier-dependent...
So, I'm not really looking at the level of detail the two of you are going for. All of the really cool and super specific crunch I'll leave to each of us. Take the fighter with a longsword, we each will want to go down our own rabbit holes for to-hit percentage, critical chance, enemy AC, and the like.
I'm just trying to get a good idea of a simple level. So like at level 6 that same fighter is doing (over 3 rounds) 63 damage or 84 damage with action surge.
Recently Treantmonk explained that DPR is highly subjective and mostly useless. This is due to the infinite possible things that could affect it.
Best way to know if you're doing a decent amount of damage. Look around your table at what everyone else is doing damage wise. If they're all doing double or more what you do, you're not doing enough. If the opposite is true and you're doing double or more than them, you're doing too much.
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A regular old attack cantrip like Fire Bolt will do an average of 6/11/17/22 damage per round, reduced by to-hit percentage (which we'll just ignore absent further +/- modifiers). Is this "good" damage per round? Not really, I'd say its the baseline for what a character might do when out of gas and unable to use their real attacks. A completely non-combat-oriented healer will only be doing slightly less with Sacred Flame (5/9/14/18).
A optimized Eldritch Blast user, stacking Agonizing Blast and maybe one other d6ish feature like Hex, and maxing out their starting 16 to a 20 in Tier 2, will do an average of 12/28/42/56 damage per round. That can certainly go a little higher if you optimize a little more or use some limited/long rest resources and features, but I think that most people agree that Agonizing Blast + Hex does "good" damage... but I think that this probably defines the very lowest boundary of "good."
A standard sword n' board fighter with Dueling fighting style and a d8 martial weapon is going to do something like 10/23/35/46 damage per round without talking about Action Surge. I'd probably call this "decent," rather than "good," but there's no shortage of ways to push that up to "good" with other spells and features.
A standard 2H fighter and a 2d6 greatsword is going to do something like 11/35/52/69 damage per round (that's after -25% rough adjustement for to-hit malus), though that can go higher not only with Action Surge but also due to other feats like PAM etc. Again, GWM 2Hers are "good" damage", a bit higher in that tier than EB Blasters.
A standard rogue dual wielding daggers is going to do something like 15/28/35/42 damage per round with just Sneak Attack. Definitely in the "decent" range rather than "good" in Tier 3 and 4, Rogues really don't deal great damage from their own class features unless you stack shenanigans onto them, other than at low levels.
A standard monk that's just punching away and using Flurry of Blows every round from T2 onwards is going to do something like 11/34/38/42 damage per round. Again, "decent" not "good" at Tier 3 and 4, but quite good in Tier 2.
A standard sorcerer that just tosses out a damage spell every round with their biggest spell slot, all day long, without metamagic... spells are tough, since slots available don't really follow clean Tier breaks. If we imagine something like Level 1-2 Chromatic Orbs in Tier 1, level 3-5 Fireballs in Tier 2, and level 6-9 Disintegrates in Tiers 3 and 4... I dunno, I suppose we're doing something like 9-18/28-35/75-90ish/90ish-105ish? But, that drops off through subsequent encounters pretty quickly, and is kind of apples-to-oranges against the other builds discussed above...
Tier 1 is hard to optimize, if you're doing 10-20 damage you're clearly doing as good or better than you can expect. But in Tier 2, you're probably wanting to do at least 30ish per round, 40-50ish in Tier 3, and over 50 or 60 in Tier 4. That's quite a bit higher than I first estimated in post #3, but pretty close to shooting for 1/5 of the HP of a DMG monster table critter of your level...
I watched some YouTube videos a while back that mike mearls did called the happy fun hour. Before the sexual harassment stuff was going on...
anyways in one of those videos he went over how damage standardization is roughly compared to the damage expectancy of a two weapon fighting rogue with sneak attack applied. No feats, no magic weapons, and the accuracy was roughly 60% if I recall correctly(probably not it is an old video from years back...)
So that’s 9.535 damage at level 1 scaling to 39.4 damage at level 19 when the last die is gained.
Rather than reducing everyone's DPR to reflect 65% accuracy, I think usually its easier to follow along by simply ignoring the 65% hit chance across the board, and only applying % modifiers for other to-hit bonuses and penalties beyond the expected curve of a +3 ability score modifier at level 1, and a +5 modifier somewhere before the end of Tier 2. Adding 10% DPR for Archery fighting style's +2 is easy, subtracting 25% DPR for GWM or Sharpshooter's -5 is easy, but constantly correcting every individual calculation for 65% baseline expected accuracy is a pain and unncessary unless you're getting into the weeds to balance attacks vs. save-based damage.
Up to CR 20, monsters gain about +15 hp per CR, and typical CR 1 HP is about 30 (not sure how the DMG came up with 71-85). For a party of 4 to beat that in three rounds, each character needs to average 1.25*(level+1) per round. In practice not every attack hits and three rounds is a long duration for a medium encounter, so I'd say damage potential (ignoring hit chance) for a PC should be around twice that (2.5*(level+1)). That's actually on the low side for well constructed martial builds, but it's not completely absurd.
I think what you're forgetting is that hit CHANCE is far more important than damage. People like to get into arguments about whether Firebolt or Eldritch Blast is better, since they're both 1d10 damage cantrips with 120 ft. range. But at higher levels, things change. The damage for Firebolt increases over time, capping out at 4d10 damage. Eldritch Blast on the other hand, simply creates more beams, for each of which you make separate attack rolls and can direct at multiple targets. Eldritch Blast can produce 4 beams at level 17, for a total of 4d10 collective damage.
So which is better? Well, with Eldritch Blast, you have 4 times as many opportunities to land a hit. Eldritch Blast is simply a more reliable attack, since you have a high chance to hit your target for decent damage. While Eldritch Blast may deal less damage on a hit (Due to the likelyhood of at least one beam missing), it is far more versatile and has a far higher hit chance than Firebolt.
Plus, if you optimize (Such as with a Sorlock), you could potentially create 8 beams with 3d20 advantage, each beam dealing 1d10+5 damage on a hit.
My point is that you should consider hit chance before damage, as it is far more valuable.
Multiple attacks per round is useful for (1) ensuring that at least one attack lands to deliver a once/round massive damage source (Sneak Attack), or (2) to stack as many instances of a static modifier as possible (agonizing blast, GWM, etc), or (3) to spread damage across targets to avoid wasting overkill damage. But multiple 1d10 attacks does NOT in and of itself do more DPR than one single attack representing the same number of d10s, that’s bad math. It doesn’t increase your total “hit chance” in the way you’re implying, just your chance of doing at least SOME damage on any given round from 65% up to 98% in Tier 4.
The 1d10/2d10/3d10/4d10 fire bolt does 6/11/17/22 average damage on hits. Factoring a 65% hit chance, that’s 4/7/11/14. To state it more explicitly, Fire bolt in T4 always either misses entirely for 0 ( 35% of the time), or hits for 4d10 average 22 (65% of the time), giving us that final average 14 DPR.
An EB without Agonizing Blast is no different; 65% hit chance in one 4d10 attack works out to the same 65% hit chance on 4 1d10 attacks. Multiple attacks may be more likely to do SOME damage on any given round, but over multiple rounds, your DPR is the same. To put it more detailed... On any given round, EB either misses all four bolts entirely for 0 (2%ish of the time), or only hits once for 1d10 average 6 (11%ish), or hits twice for average 11 (31%), or thrice for average 17 (38%), or all four times for average 22 (18%ish). That still comes out to... average 14ish DPR.
The reason why EB does more DPR than Fire Bolt emerges only when you start stacking additional bonus damage on each bolt. With Agonizing Blast, EB does 1x 1d10+3/2x 1d10+5/3x 1d10+5/4x 1d10+5, or 9/21/31/42 average damage on hits. Factoring a 65% hit chance, that’s 6/14/20/27, about twice what EB or Fire Bolt turned out without that extra damage modifier.
We could go into all kinds of stuff in theory. Single target damage versus loss of said damage that is above what is needed to kill said target, Area of effect damage damage versus single target damage, critical hit potential or not, melee reliant or ranged, situational requirements for said damage, resource management for damage potential, etc.
This is all great stuff you all are bringing! Thank you!
Damage, and how it applies to the CR calculations for combat encounters, 100% assumes no magic weapons, no feats, 4 PC in the party, and no multiclassing. And it's why so many folks thinks the CR system sucks. Many, if not most, tables play with feats, multiclassing, and has ample magic items. That make s a difference on CR. If the expected damage from a PC at any given level is x, and you then get in a situation where a couple of magic items combined with maybe a feat and dip in a second class makes their damage output now x*1.6, that is huge by itself but even bigger with the entire party, and again even more with a bigger party. To the tune of either a level or more higher party CR or the equivalent of 6, 7, or 8 PCs in a party.
So then what does the dungeon master do? Let this party of optimized PCs face a combat encounter or encounters calculated or designed for a party assuming the basic rules and let them steamroll the combat(s)? Or does the dungeon master use the math and CR system to make those combat encounters balanced for the CR of the optimized party? Is steam rolling every combat fun? If you are adjusting the combats appropriately, what is the point of optimization?
I usually refer to this amazing spreadsheet made by LudicSavant to calculate all sorts of DPR: https://tinyurl.com/y4cvx47n
As a general and simple rule of thumb, without considering feats and etc, I noticed that a heavy-weapon hitter damage is super sustainable. Greatsword with GWF usually kills stronger enemies without the need to invest in PAM or GWM; I had the sense that these feats usually have lots of wastes.
In one my games, our Ranger is the most effective and reliable striker thanks to Archery fighting style and Hunter’s Mark.
All of the "top tier" martial damage builds I see people making online with the big martial feats have some kind of resource heavy and/or situational method of gaining advantage or double advantage. Without or when these situations or resources are't present these feat builds don't do much more damage than not having them when you are factoring in to-hit chance. Archer SS does about 2-3 more than non-SS version for example.
I suppose it’s true that SS doesn’t add much per strike from an adjusted damage for to-hit perspective ... but builds that attack 3+ times per turn do make that more and more worth it the more they attack.
A longbow atttack with archery fighting style is a 75% hit chance of average 4.5+5 (10) per hit. So call that a generous 8 adjusted damage per strike.
A longbow attack with archery fs and Shapshooter is a 50% hit chance of average 4.5+5+10 (20) per hit. So that’s 10 adjusted damage per strike.
Theres other ways to add a couple damage per strike, like Hunter’s Mark... but they often use limited resources like spell slots, require Bonus Actions to activate, effect only one creature or one attack per round, etc etc. Getting a flexible +2-3 damage per hit, all day long, is absolutely worth building towards for most martial characters (other than rogues, who stand to lose more DPR than they gain if they miss all attacks in a round).
The thing that makes Sharpshooter way over the top isn't the -5/+10 effect (it's nice, worth a feat, but not super), it's combining that with ignore cover and long range.
A non-optimizer here asking what all of you consider to be "good" regular (repeatable) damage output for any or all classes that are focusing on dealing damage in a combat scenario.
I'm curious about damage over a given combat, like over 3 rounds, 4 rounds, 5 rounds, etc. And not really interested in single turn nova damage stuff as that is more...well...I'm not interested in that. D&D:O and Treantmonk's Temple are two fairly well known optimizer YouTube channels and I know they do all of their calculations and theorizing differently, as I'm sure we all do, so I guess I'm asking for kind of a range that you use as a player and/or DM as to what is a threshold for "good damage output. Not builds, or the most damage. Just a threshold. I'm also much more interested at the 90% of actual played levels of 1-13, and not so much any level 20 hijinks. Maybe say at levels that surround changes in the tiers of play, like levels 4, 6, 10, and 12.
For example a fighter with a longsword, the dueling fighting style, and a maxed attack/damage ability score, over 3, 4, and 5 round combats, with and without action surge, I would consider that to be a pretty decent target for a character to be doing good damage. (Notice no to-hit chance, critical hit, advantage, or situational calculations as I KNOW we all do that differently based on the tables we frequent.)
You have to have some method of accounting for hit chance to have any way of comparing e.g. dueling to archery. Assuming all shots hit but none crit is a weird assumption that leaves far too much out. I assume a baseline accuracy of 65% (70% at level 9), which includes proficiency bonus and assumes a stat bonus of +3 at L1, +4 at L4, and +5 at L8, vs the relevant defensive CR's AC (so CR 8's AC at level 8, etc).
The Treantmonk standard (eldritch blast with agonizing blast, assuming CHA 16, raising to 20 as quickly as possible) is therefore, for level L,where // is truncated (floored, since these are positive values) division, and ignoring levels 9 and 1 (i.e. before you can get agonizing):
((L+1)//6+1)*(5.5*.7+.65*(3+min(2,L//4)))
At levels 4, 6, 10, and 12:
In force damage, which is hard to resist - if you do the same damage but it's type: poison, your functional DPR is much worse.
I actually don't know if Treantmonk assumes Hex. If he does, here are those numbers again:
That's a mix of force and necrotic - necrotic is worse.
I've been meaning to one day build the Spreadsheet to End All Spreadsheets, to attempt to quantify AC, HP, and damage by tier in an objective way. 4E categorized both players and monsters into clear performance roles, "Striker" or "Tank" etc., which really helped understand primary vs. secondary statistics and benchmarks for level.... 5E lacks that. It may be, upon doing the math, that one would discover that there simply is not a unifying philosophy that can be applied to monsters, and that in fact combat difficulty is every bit as arbitrary as the CR encounter system appears. That would be... disappointing.
For martial characters, I think that doing 10-20 damage per round is "good" in Tier 1, 20-30 "good" in Tier 2, and over 30 good in Tiers 3 and 4, though the gaps really start to widen at that point between normal characters doing good damage and those that are uber-optimized to do unreasonably great damage. Player ACs all tend to stabilize between 17 and 21 somewhere during Tier 2, but I'm really not sure whether monster ACs trend upwards with Tier, or remain a scattered mess while HP ticks upwards. Proficiency in saves seems so inconsistent and arbitrary that I don't really ever know what to expect when I cast a spell at an enemy.
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Monster AC and HP are extremely regular; there's absolutely no consistency whatsoever to monster saves.
Monster AC is an exact match, at all levels except 9, for 65% accuracy to be hit assuming a stat modifier of +3 that goes up to +4 at level 4 and +5 at level 8. At level 9 it "hiccups" to 70%.
Monster HP is mostly linear, with some odd behavior below 1 and at 20+.
The DMG offers the absolutely useless guidance of counting saves for defensive CR based on how many saves the monster is proficient in, regardless of its proficiency bonus or its relevant stat bonus, meaning a monster's CR goes up for being proficient in 3 saves with a +2 proficiency bonus but does not go up for adding +4 (or more) to each of those three stats, unless said stats have cascading effects on things that do impact CR - which WIS, INT, and CHA don't.
How can monster AC be an "exact match," when different monsters of any given CR have different ACs? What are you looking at to find an average AC, and what formula are you using to match CR to level? It is nowhere near as straightforward as you are suggesting.
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The DMG has a table of monster HP and AC by CR; actual CR is round((OCR+DCR)/2), and DCR is based on monster HP, which is then modified by half (truncated) the difference between its actual AC and the intended AC for that CR. As a result, we know the expected AC and HP of every CR.
The DMG table is a guide to quickly homebrewing your own monsters, not a peak under the hood of the design philosophy of those that are published in the MM or other source books. Picked at random, an Air Elemental (AC 15, HP 90, resistances to common weapon damages), Banderhobb (AC 15, HP 84, no resistances), and Brontosaurus (AC 15, HP 121, no resistances) are all CR 5 creatures, but other than their AC, don't seem to have anything else in particular in common about how many hit points they have or how much damage they do. Among CR 5 creatures, there are AC's as low as 9, as high as 20, and everything in between. There are HPs of 40 and below, or over 100. I can't find many that seem all that similar to what the table suggests a CR 5 should look like.
I don't think the DMG creature creation rules can be trusted for measuring actual encounters, but they might be a good baseline to measure player performance against rather than building a table of every published creature. A CR 1 creature is not a 1-for-1 match for a level 1 character, and the ratio of their strength changes a lot over the tier spectrum too so you can't just apply a simple multiplier. I suppose that it wouldn't be bad to target hitting that table's AC on an 8 or higher (65% accuracy), (which easily tracks on curve if you bring your attack ability score to 20 by level 8 as usual)... maybe 1/5 of the low end of the monster's HP range as damage per round? (14 at level 1, 29 at level 6, 44 at level 11, 62 at level 17, 71 at level 20)? That feels like it would be harder and harder to meet, however, so again I think that the ratio is too tier-dependent...
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Thanks for the replies!
So, I'm not really looking at the level of detail the two of you are going for. All of the really cool and super specific crunch I'll leave to each of us. Take the fighter with a longsword, we each will want to go down our own rabbit holes for to-hit percentage, critical chance, enemy AC, and the like.
I'm just trying to get a good idea of a simple level. So like at level 6 that same fighter is doing (over 3 rounds) 63 damage or 84 damage with action surge.
Recently Treantmonk explained that DPR is highly subjective and mostly useless. This is due to the infinite possible things that could affect it.
Best way to know if you're doing a decent amount of damage. Look around your table at what everyone else is doing damage wise. If they're all doing double or more what you do, you're not doing enough. If the opposite is true and you're doing double or more than them, you're doing too much.
Tier 1 is hard to optimize, if you're doing 10-20 damage you're clearly doing as good or better than you can expect. But in Tier 2, you're probably wanting to do at least 30ish per round, 40-50ish in Tier 3, and over 50 or 60 in Tier 4. That's quite a bit higher than I first estimated in post #3, but pretty close to shooting for 1/5 of the HP of a DMG monster table critter of your level...
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I watched some YouTube videos a while back that mike mearls did called the happy fun hour. Before the sexual harassment stuff was going on...
anyways in one of those videos he went over how damage standardization is roughly compared to the damage expectancy of a two weapon fighting rogue with sneak attack applied. No feats, no magic weapons, and the accuracy was roughly 60% if I recall correctly(probably not it is an old video from years back...)
So that’s 9.535 damage at level 1 scaling to 39.4 damage at level 19 when the last die is gained.
Rather than reducing everyone's DPR to reflect 65% accuracy, I think usually its easier to follow along by simply ignoring the 65% hit chance across the board, and only applying % modifiers for other to-hit bonuses and penalties beyond the expected curve of a +3 ability score modifier at level 1, and a +5 modifier somewhere before the end of Tier 2. Adding 10% DPR for Archery fighting style's +2 is easy, subtracting 25% DPR for GWM or Sharpshooter's -5 is easy, but constantly correcting every individual calculation for 65% baseline expected accuracy is a pain and unncessary unless you're getting into the weeds to balance attacks vs. save-based damage.
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Up to CR 20, monsters gain about +15 hp per CR, and typical CR 1 HP is about 30 (not sure how the DMG came up with 71-85). For a party of 4 to beat that in three rounds, each character needs to average 1.25*(level+1) per round. In practice not every attack hits and three rounds is a long duration for a medium encounter, so I'd say damage potential (ignoring hit chance) for a PC should be around twice that (2.5*(level+1)). That's actually on the low side for well constructed martial builds, but it's not completely absurd.
I think what you're forgetting is that hit CHANCE is far more important than damage. People like to get into arguments about whether Firebolt or Eldritch Blast is better, since they're both 1d10 damage cantrips with 120 ft. range. But at higher levels, things change. The damage for Firebolt increases over time, capping out at 4d10 damage. Eldritch Blast on the other hand, simply creates more beams, for each of which you make separate attack rolls and can direct at multiple targets. Eldritch Blast can produce 4 beams at level 17, for a total of 4d10 collective damage.
So which is better? Well, with Eldritch Blast, you have 4 times as many opportunities to land a hit. Eldritch Blast is simply a more reliable attack, since you have a high chance to hit your target for decent damage. While Eldritch Blast may deal less damage on a hit (Due to the likelyhood of at least one beam missing), it is far more versatile and has a far higher hit chance than Firebolt.
Plus, if you optimize (Such as with a Sorlock), you could potentially create 8 beams with 3d20 advantage, each beam dealing 1d10+5 damage on a hit.
My point is that you should consider hit chance before damage, as it is far more valuable.
Multiple attacks per round is useful for (1) ensuring that at least one attack lands to deliver a once/round massive damage source (Sneak Attack), or (2) to stack as many instances of a static modifier as possible (agonizing blast, GWM, etc), or (3) to spread damage across targets to avoid wasting overkill damage. But multiple 1d10 attacks does NOT in and of itself do more DPR than one single attack representing the same number of d10s, that’s bad math. It doesn’t increase your total “hit chance” in the way you’re implying, just your chance of doing at least SOME damage on any given round from 65% up to 98% in Tier 4.
The 1d10/2d10/3d10/4d10 fire bolt does 6/11/17/22 average damage on hits. Factoring a 65% hit chance, that’s 4/7/11/14. To state it more explicitly, Fire bolt in T4 always either misses entirely for 0 ( 35% of the time), or hits for 4d10 average 22 (65% of the time), giving us that final average 14 DPR.
An EB without Agonizing Blast is no different; 65% hit chance in one 4d10 attack works out to the same 65% hit chance on 4 1d10 attacks. Multiple attacks may be more likely to do SOME damage on any given round, but over multiple rounds, your DPR is the same. To put it more detailed... On any given round, EB either misses all four bolts entirely for 0 (2%ish of the time), or only hits once for 1d10 average 6 (11%ish), or hits twice for average 11 (31%), or thrice for average 17 (38%), or all four times for average 22 (18%ish). That still comes out to... average 14ish DPR.
The reason why EB does more DPR than Fire Bolt emerges only when you start stacking additional bonus damage on each bolt. With Agonizing Blast, EB does 1x 1d10+3/2x 1d10+5/3x 1d10+5/4x 1d10+5, or 9/21/31/42 average damage on hits. Factoring a 65% hit chance, that’s 6/14/20/27, about twice what EB or Fire Bolt turned out without that extra damage modifier.
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We could go into all kinds of stuff in theory. Single target damage versus loss of said damage that is above what is needed to kill said target, Area of effect damage damage versus single target damage, critical hit potential or not, melee reliant or ranged, situational requirements for said damage, resource management for damage potential, etc.
This is all great stuff you all are bringing! Thank you!
Damage, and how it applies to the CR calculations for combat encounters, 100% assumes no magic weapons, no feats, 4 PC in the party, and no multiclassing. And it's why so many folks thinks the CR system sucks. Many, if not most, tables play with feats, multiclassing, and has ample magic items. That make s a difference on CR. If the expected damage from a PC at any given level is x, and you then get in a situation where a couple of magic items combined with maybe a feat and dip in a second class makes their damage output now x*1.6, that is huge by itself but even bigger with the entire party, and again even more with a bigger party. To the tune of either a level or more higher party CR or the equivalent of 6, 7, or 8 PCs in a party.
So then what does the dungeon master do? Let this party of optimized PCs face a combat encounter or encounters calculated or designed for a party assuming the basic rules and let them steamroll the combat(s)? Or does the dungeon master use the math and CR system to make those combat encounters balanced for the CR of the optimized party? Is steam rolling every combat fun? If you are adjusting the combats appropriately, what is the point of optimization?
I usually refer to this amazing spreadsheet made by LudicSavant to calculate all sorts of DPR: https://tinyurl.com/y4cvx47n
As a general and simple rule of thumb, without considering feats and etc, I noticed that a heavy-weapon hitter damage is super sustainable. Greatsword with GWF usually kills stronger enemies without the need to invest in PAM or GWM; I had the sense that these feats usually have lots of wastes.
In one my games, our Ranger is the most effective and reliable striker thanks to Archery fighting style and Hunter’s Mark.
All of the "top tier" martial damage builds I see people making online with the big martial feats have some kind of resource heavy and/or situational method of gaining advantage or double advantage. Without or when these situations or resources are't present these feat builds don't do much more damage than not having them when you are factoring in to-hit chance. Archer SS does about 2-3 more than non-SS version for example.
I suppose it’s true that SS doesn’t add much per strike from an adjusted damage for to-hit perspective ... but builds that attack 3+ times per turn do make that more and more worth it the more they attack.
A longbow atttack with archery fighting style is a 75% hit chance of average 4.5+5 (10) per hit. So call that a generous 8 adjusted damage per strike.
A longbow attack with archery fs and Shapshooter is a 50% hit chance of average 4.5+5+10 (20) per hit. So that’s 10 adjusted damage per strike.
Theres other ways to add a couple damage per strike, like Hunter’s Mark... but they often use limited resources like spell slots, require Bonus Actions to activate, effect only one creature or one attack per round, etc etc. Getting a flexible +2-3 damage per hit, all day long, is absolutely worth building towards for most martial characters (other than rogues, who stand to lose more DPR than they gain if they miss all attacks in a round).
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The thing that makes Sharpshooter way over the top isn't the -5/+10 effect (it's nice, worth a feat, but not super), it's combining that with ignore cover and long range.